The Seven Caves and other Spine-tingling Short Stories

stopped talking to each other.

  For a long time.

  Sure, they rose together, ate their meals, shared what they could with each other and said their dispassionate goodbyes everyday, but something had changed. What they had didn’t feel like love anymore.

  So Lorna began to do things she never used to. It took her mind off her loneliness. She eyed her jogging clothes. It’d been a year since she even took a walk, let alone a jog, like she had done almost every day once upon a time. Her chair felt like a magnet, keeping her down. But, she broke its hold, put her old clothes on and tried to ignore where the pants had gotten tight in spots.

  After a quick shower she went out for coffee. She didn’t do this very often. Truth was, she really didn’t love coffee. Seemed like everyone else in America did though. A good place to hang out and watch the world go by. When it was her turn at the counter to order there were too many choices to make for this particular morning. She looked at the specials. Ordered a mocha frappa-something then took a seat outside on the patio and closed her eyes as she felt a cool breeze catch her hair.

  “Hello.” Some man with a deep voice said. To her.

  Lorna opened her eyes. The most handsome man this side of the Mississippi stood squarely in front of her. Lorna felt sure there were thousands of little secrets in the sparkle of his green eyes. His black hair glistened in the sun.

  “Ah, hey.” Lorna said, taking a sip of the way-too-sugary-frappa-thingy. Her hand shook terribly.

  “Lovely day.”

  “Yes, Sir. A great day for dreamin’.” It just slipped out, but that’s what she was doing.

  That’s what her walks seemed to get her in touch with. But she was hardly walking this morning. In fact, by the time she’d gotten home, she’d started running. Lorna wasn’t sure when she started running, it just sort of happened. She thought she was fortunate to have run that day on account of her cheeks were probably still rosy. He was truly the most handsome man she’d ever met.

  “I’d like to hear a few of those, if you care to tell me.”

  “What?”

  “Your dreams…”

  He took a seat beside Lorna and made her blood pressure soar so that she felt the beating of her heart in her back. She knew he was being forward and she knew she shouldn’t really be talking so frank to a stranger. But at the time she felt like her husband was a bigger stranger and hadn’t been interested in much of anything about her so the stranger’s words were music to her ears.

  They talked and talked. They shared stories about their families. He was perfect in every way. Perfect. Except for one thing.

  He was dead.

  You see he was the kind of ghost with such a love of life that he didn’t appear the slightest bit see-through. And when he told her, Lorna didn’t hold it against him. That dead guy made her feel more alive on the patio of the local coffee place than she had felt in who knows how long.

  As the gentleman ghost explained it, her soul had been in love before. With him. It was what he called The One Great Love. Rare. Such a love that a soul, though it flows from one life to the

  next, never finds it again. For all souls are promised The One Great Love. No more. No less.

  And it was because her soul had experienced such a love that it ached for it now. But there’s no undoing what had already been done. It was two hundred years prior when they’d met. They’d run away together because her family didn’t like that she wanted to a colonial and that he was a ship’s captain. “Too much loneliness” Her mother warned. They settled in Massachusetts and the bride took to the widow’s walk each time her beloved sailed out to sea. Watching the masts bob up and down in the water until she couldn’t make the ship out to be but a speck on the horizon. And in order to comfort her while away on his sea-faring adventures he gave his love a locket with a ruby heart. He filled the locket with kisses before taking to the sea. She always wore the locket. Thought of it as protection.

  But protection it did not give. Although their love was strong, the wickedness of the town was stronger. She became an outcast because of her independent, headstrong ways. And one night, when an auction went favorably for the young bride and poorly for an embarrassed local magistrate, he and his cohorts decided to teach her a lesson. Put her in her place. And when her Great Love returned, she was nowhere to be found. Only the ruby locket remained. Placed over a lamppost outside seemingly to torment him.

  The search for his love was suspended as the first snow fell.

  And you see, since her body was never found, her soul, which should have finally been at peace, wandered into life, after life, after life, searching for a love it had already had.

  Haunting life itself with her presence.

  The handsome ghost pulled the ruby locket out of his pocket and dangled it over his forefinger before offering it to Lorna.

  Lorna was bewitched by the story. Bewitched by true love. She wiped a little sweat from her forehead and reached for the locket. And as she did a blue light covered her body and chilled her bones. She felt lighter and stronger than she’d felt in years.

  “Let’s walk together, my Love.”

  Lorna stood up from her chair and didn’t catch her reflection in the coffee house window.

  “I’m…I’m…not...” And those were the last words Lorna spoke on this Earth.

  Lorna’s memories, and all that Lorna was, floated away into space like some dreams and desires and intentions do. And as she did, Gabriella hugged her beloved.

  “It’s okay, my Love. We’ll be together, now, forever.”

  “You finally found me?”

  “Yes, my sweet. Some men found your body yesterday. And now, you and I will never be parted.”

  The paper said that Lorna had a heart attack that afternoon. Died right there at the coffee shop. But what the paper didn’t know is that Lorna’s soul really died centuries ago and should never have been walking the Earth.

  Drive-Thru Death and Coffee

  Roy owned the only drive-thru funeral business in Maine. It was about to go under, but not for the reasons you might expect. People didn’t tire of sending their loved ones to eternity in a drive-up. No tax increase would mark the end of the drivethru funeral business. No, Roy’s business failed because that summer, in Maine, people stopped dying.

  His last customer drove up about two months ago. Since then Roy has had lots of time on his hands. And, being an enterpriser, he responded to the change in market conditions.

  Roy thought it best to add more services. So he installed a cappuccino and espresso maker and changed his neon sign to read “Drive-Thru Death and Coffee.” Maybe coffee should come before death, he thought. But, well, death was on the sign first.

  Let’s be honest. It wasn’t a fabulous business decision. The two Starbucks in town skirted “Drive-Thru Death and Coffee” several blocks in both directions and more than met the caffeine needs of most of the town. The only time Roy had even a hope of making any coffee profits was in the winter when slogging down ice-slicked streets made every block matter. And Roy, having plenty of time to run the numbers, knew that “Drive-Thru Death and Coffee” wouldn’t see the leaves fall. That is if things didn’t change. Fast.

  Roy was alone most of the time with only his ease-the-loss comfort music to keep him company. He just knew someone would drive up, any day now, like the old days when he’d have a few cars waiting. Once upon a time, he calculated that Friday was his busiest day of the week. No rhyme or reason, that’s just when people made drive-up arrangements for their loved ones in Dyer Brook, ME. It had always been that way. He looked at the calendar. “X’d” off yet another Friday with a bold red sharpie.

  And it was a good thing Roy had the comfort music playing because late in the afternoon of the June the 29th he’d just “X’d,” a much-too-nice-for-this-neighborhood black car pulled up. Roy opened his sliding glass window.

  “What can I do you for?”

  “Cremation.” The mad said, his eyes fixed on the road.


  “Oh.” Roy’s twinge of relief at the sight of a new customer coupled with a weird tug at his heart. Dyer Brook was a small town. He most likely knew the departed. Comfort was like riding a bike though. He rolled into his death-speak like it had only been hours since he gave his I’m-sorry-for-your-loss schpeel. Roy reached over for the clipboard with the paperwork attached and turned on his walkie-talkie. Called for Reggie. But all he heard was static. His pal Reggie was still away on vacation. A long vacation, now that Roy thought about it. Who would pick up the stiff now?

  Roy adjusted the paper on a clipboard and gave it to the gentleman. “Fill out the lines with the red Xs.” Roy liked making red Xs. In the time he had off he had X’d just about everything that needed X-ing in his 6x6” office.

  The gentleman’s perfect penmanship hypnotized Roy. On the top line, beside the red “X” by the word “Last Name” the gentleman wrote “McKenzie”. By the red “X” at the word “First Name” the stranger wrote “R-O-Y.”

  “This some kind of joke?” Roy threw out his cappuccino. He’d reached his target heart rate earlier that afternoon. Had little else to occupy his time these months other than trying to make the best cappuccino in town, if not on the planet. It was his holy grail.

  The gentleman kept writing. Filled in Roy’s address, date of birth. Every darn number associated with Roy since birth.

  Roy laughed. “OK, who put you up to this? Was it Reggie? It had to be